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• Victorian Christmas

  Christmas cards, trees, crackers, gifts, turkey and party games started to become fashionable from the 1840s. A Christmas Carol was published in 1843.

  
• Dickens's Christmas

  At Christmas, Dickens's family danced, played games, went to the pantomime and watched him perform magic tricks.
• The Victorian poor

  The Poor Law of 1834 defined the unemployed as the 'idle poor'. Begging was illegal and the only provision was the workhouse, where families would be separated.

  
• The Victorian treadmill

  The treadmill was a punishment for prisoners sentenced to hard labour. They would spend six hours a day on it for no other reason than to learn the value of hard work.
• Thomas Malthus


  Malthus believed that population growth would outstrip food supply. He argued that deaths caused by poor living and working conditions, disease, malnutrition and natural disasters were 'positive checks' because they kept the population under control.

  
• Ghost stories

  A Christmas Carol draws on the tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. The novella includes gothic conventions such as haunting, a night-time setting and Jacob Marley's imprisonment in his chains.
• Dowries

  In a patriarchal society, a young woman's father would usually offer a dowry - a payment or gift given as an advance on her future inheritance. Belle had no dowry and believed that Scrooge only proposed to her because he was young and naive.
• Bakers' ovens

  Many families were so poor they couldn't afford ovens. They would roast their meat at a bakery on Sundays and at Christmas. Scrooge points out that some Christians believed that all shops should be shut on holy days, depriving the poor of their dinner.
• Employment

  Bob Cratchit earns 15 shillings a week (15 bob), about £80 in today's money, or less than £2 an hour. He isn't entitled to paid holiday and has no job security. Mr Fezziwig was a much more generous employer than Scrooge.
• The Hungry Forties

  The 1840s was a time of economic depression. Dickens was inspired to write A Christmas Carol by the povety he witnessed while walking around Manchester in 1843.